Christmas is nearly upon us, its that time of year when we think about absent family and friends and especially those no longer here to celebrate with us. Our long departed ancestors knew how to celebrate Christmas too, albeit sometimes in a very different way, though their life often mirrored ours of today, with the same…
Tag: crime
December 1888; Weymouth Drunks, Domestics and Deaths
Picture this, it’s the year 1888, it’s December, on the cusp of Christmas and the good folk of Weymouth are going about their everyday business as usual. For some though, it was not to be a good ending to their year. Pretty much like todays inhabitant’s of our seaside town, those of the Victorian era…
Who’s a naughty boy then? Victorian prisoners, were they really all bad?.
The Prison Registers contain many intriguing stories within their yellowed pages, and the faded elegant script tells us of our ancestors past lives. They are just a tiny snapshot of their life’s story, but can reveal a great deal about the person or the family. On the very last day of the year 1872, James…
Fun and games in Weymouth town, one long sip and we all fall down! ; 1883
Much like today, the Victorians had their fare share of petty criminals or well know characters around town, those that must just have made the local bobby shake their heads when they come across them yet again. We might well think that bad behaviour and drunkenness in the streets is a new phenomenon, but believe…
Weymouth 1857; A heinous crime solved after 50 years.
I’m a great believer in karma, or what goes around, comes around, and that ultimately things will always work themselves out. Such was the case of a heinous murder that took place in Weymouth during the late Georgian period. This was an age when Weymouth was an up and coming, lively, gay resort, thanks to visiting Royalty and…
1899; Ding dong dell…Mary’s in the well
The length of Weymouth’s ancient quayside is lined with an eclectic jumble of historic buildings, each one has a thousand stories to tell, they have witnessed fights, lovers, joy, tears, death and birth….the ghostly whispers of so many events lie within their walls, and under their eaves. This time, our story starts not in Weymouth,…
1889; Girl held against her will at Broadwey?
With all the media reports on the news recently concerning the shocking story of the 3 women imprisoned as slaves, Weymouth had it’s own version of the sorry tale back in 1889. Sarah Guy was born in 1865 into a less than ideal and loving family home. Her Dad John was a violent drunk, and…
1867; Danger Lurks in Portland Quarries.
The quarries on Portland are world renown. They are of a strange type of brutal beauty, the glare from the white stone is blinding in the bright sunshine, the heat reflects mercilessly from the calcified remains that makes up the huge slabs that tumble and totter precariously all around. Ultimately, their beauty belies the ever present…
1897; Smugglers on the Great Western Channel Steamer the Ibex.
Weymouth has enjoyed trade with the Channel islands for many decades. Ships have been plying their trade between the three ports, Weymouth, Jersey, and Gurnsey ever since the the end of the 18thc, transferring anything and everything from tomatoes, potatoes, cut flowers, passengers…oh, and of course illegal goods! ! Many a ships crew member was thwarted in their…
VICTORIAN TALES FROM WEYMOUTH AND PORTLAND 